Pet Peeves — Linguistically Speaking
Six years ago I wrote a short piece here about how certain people, and cultural groups, can be characterised by …
Category Archives: Language
And the Word Is…
Before I get into the discussion of certain words, I need to offer a bit of context. Why do I …
Navajo Star Wars and Wind Talkers
What a great idea! — the Navajo Nation is beginning work on a project to dub the 1977 movie, Star …
Goodbye Rotten Penmanship!
My penmanship is so bad that if I’d been born before typewriters I could never have become a writer. I’ve …
Colour Me EmPurpled
Ah, c’mon. This is getting sillier by the day. I thought Dictionary.com had outdone themselves with their selection of amygdaliform as …
Shaped Like an Almond
Dictionary.com Word of the Day Sunday November 25, 2012 amygdaliform \uh-MIG-duh-luh-fawrm, adjective: Shaped like an almond. Amygdaliform derives from the …
There’s a Bathroom on the Right
Ah, yes. That great line from the Creedence Clearwater Revival song, Bad Moon Rising. Or not. The line is actually …
Plumbing: The Metaphor
Have you any idea how many plumbing metaphors there are? Neither do I. But I was amazed to discover that …
Merry Christmas and Other Oxymorons
oxymoron – noun: a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect; a contradiction of terms. …
Dictionary (n): Book explaining the words of a language
Has my dictionary become obsolete, or have I? (“Well, yes,” I hear you murmur.) Okay, so my Oxford English Dictionary …
